The field of the present invention relates to electronic design automation, and more particularly, to methods and systems for maintaining information relating to virtual components and associated meta-data used in chip design.
Silicon technology has advanced such that designers must commonly design chips consisting of millions of transistors. Because of these advances in technology and increasing time to market pressure, designers are developing entire electronic systems or subsystems on a single chip, as opposed to spreading out the design over multiple chips. For example, a subsystem design for a cellular phone may contain a micro-controller as well as a digital signal processor and other components all on a single chip (typically an application-specific integrated circuit or ASIC) or portion of a single chip. These subsystem designs, when stored as design data and supporting documentation for use with electronic design automation (EDA) tools on a computer workstation in a xe2x80x9cvirtual socketxe2x80x9d design environment, are sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9ccoresxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cvirtual componentsxe2x80x9d (xe2x80x9cVCsxe2x80x9d).
After testing and verifying the design for the components within an overall system, the subsystem designs can often be reused in other application areasxe2x80x94for instance, the microcontroller used in the cellular phone ASIC example above could also potentially be used in a chip used in an automotive application. It could be very costly, wasteful and inefficient if these subsystem designs (i.e., cores) were redesigned for every new application. Design reuse of these cores, also commonly referred to as xe2x80x9cIPxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cIPsxe2x80x9d (short for xe2x80x9cIntellectual Propertyxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cIntellectual Properties,xe2x80x9d respectively), would allow designers to become more efficient and foster a market for existing design cores which is applicable to more than one application.
While the novelty of treating IPs as marketable commodities is such that associated terminology is still evolving, some standardization has been achieved. For example, the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) is an organization formed to specify open standards for VCs, permitting the reuse of cores from multiple sources on a single integrated circuit (IC) or chip. In an analogy to how discrete ICs fit into sockets on a printed circuit board, the VCs may be viewed as xe2x80x9cintegratedxe2x80x9d into xe2x80x9cvirtual socketsxe2x80x9d in an IC design; hence, the title of the VSIA organization. Using the open standards of the VSIA, it is hoped by the participants that IP from different sources can be quickly integrated at the functional, logical and physical levels. The virtual components, or VCs, can take on many formsxe2x80x94i.e., they can be either system level macros, megacell, or embedded software cores used in system chip design. VCs can generally be categorized according to the different abstract levels of design used to captured them (which also dictates to some extent the manner in which they are stored). For example, a hardware VC such as megacell could be either captured in the form of a functional description in a standard functional language such as HDL (Hardware Description Language), a physical abstraction in a standard physical abstraction language such as GDSII, or layout data. Similarly, an embedded software VC can be stored in the form of either source code or executable code. This flexibility helps the user reuse VCs in the abstraction level he or she may want.
Because of the advantages gained by users in reusing virtual components so as to meet the demands of increasing design complexity and time to reaching the market, IP databases or repositories have been developed to accumulate core designs for reuse. However a mere repository provides no assurances that the core designs stored meet applicable standards, nor does such a repository necessarily provide ease of and control over access and use.
Thus, there is a need for a distributed database providing an infrastructure for electronic design that users can access remotely and conveniently, and which provides assurances of quality and a measure of security.
The present invention provides in one aspect an IP library management system useful for electronic design automation applications.
In a preferred embodiment, the IP library management system supports users on a plurality of local area networks coupled through a wide area network such as the Internet. In accordance with one embodiment as disclosed herein, the IP library management system can utilize a client-server system configuration which includes a master IP database for storing virtual component design data, coupled to a master IP database server on a local area network. A catalog database server may also be provided on the local area network, and couples to an IP catalog database for storing attributes pertaining to the stored virtual component data. The IP library management system further preferably includes an IP registration system, an IP data management system, an IP selection system, an IP catalog management system, and an JP modification management system, which reside on an application server.
In a preferred embodiment, the IP registration system tests the quality of new or modified virtual component data for reuse according to standard guidelinesxe2x80x94for example, VSIA standards. If the new or modified virtual component data meets the standards, the IP registration system enters the new or modified data into the master IP database.
In a preferred embodiment, the IP management system controls whether a user may access the master IP database and the IP catalog database. In addition, the IP management system preferably controls setup and maintenance of the master IP database and updates the master IP database upon the registration of new or modified virtual component data.
In a preferred embodiment, the IP selection system permits browsing of the IP catalog database by means of a query engine, and allows access of selected virtual component data from the master IP database, and transport thereof to the user""s work area on his workstation.
In a preferred embodiment, the IP catalog management system manages the setup of the IP catalog database schema and any updates to the IP catalog database.
In a preferred embodiment, the IP modification management system manages the reporting and tracking of errors or issues detected in the virtual component data.
Other aspects and advantages of the present invention are disclosed by the following description and figures.